Every Moment After

by Joseph Moldover

  “Anyway, they have their own plane. He flies it. He’s supposed to fly everyone up to Nantucket for a long weekend in August. Doesn’t that sound awkward?”

  “Yeah . . .”

  “But that’s the point: I don’t think my parents have even thought of that! They’re not inconsiderate people, but it’s just not the way they think about things. For them, going away with this family serves a purpose, and me being there serves a purpose, and the idea that I might not want to spend a long weekend flying around and sitting on the beach and whatnot with my ex-boyfriend doesn’t even occur to them.”

  And whatnot. I feel a sudden hatred for Conrad. And for everyone else who goes to Yale and summers on Nantucket. And especially, particularly, deeply, and truly for each and every asshole in the world who flies his own airplane.

  “Parents try,” I say. “They do their best.”

  “I suppose.”

  “You could refuse to go.”

  “Oh, that would be quite the rebellion, wouldn’t it? Very unlike me.”

  “It would be. Have you ever rebelled against anything?”

  “Well, I’m going to Berkeley instead of Stanford. My parents very much preferred Stanford.”

  “That’s . . . it?”

  “That’s not good?”

  “No, it’s fine. It’s, um, a good one. Yeah.”

  We’ve arrived back at her house, following the names of presidents I mostly half remember from history class. I guess you can have only so many Washington and Lincoln and Roosevelt streets before you have to dig a little deeper. Martin Van Buren would probably be tickled to know that a cul-de-sac with million-­dollar houses is named for him in central New Jersey.

  “Well, here we are,” Viola says, turning to me and trying to unwind the leash from her legs as Winnie darts around, probably angling for another taste of my ankle. I keep my distance.

  “I’m sorry about your mailbox.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “There’s probably some sort of insurance or something.”

  “I’m sure there is. This has been nice, Cole. Thank you so much for the book. It’s very thoughtful.”

  It’s actually an expression of unbridled, unexpressed passion, but sure, we can go with “thoughtful.”

  “It was nothing,” I tell her. “I’m glad you like it.” I start toward my car. I’ll wait a few days and then maybe call her. Wait until Matt comes up with a plan B for Eddie. Wait until there’s some good reason to go by the accounting agency. When are taxes due? Not until April, I think.

  I reach my car.

  I can see the end of the summer, way out in front of me, months away, but I’m rushing toward it like a plane racing down a runway.

  I’m fucking sick of waiting.

  “Hey,” I call to Viola. She’s halfway across her lawn, Winnie jogging by her side, acting like he’s not a complete psychopath. She turns. “You want to get lunch with me sometime? We could meet up at the diner.”

  She pulls her sunglasses off and squints at me. The sun is to my back.

  “I’ve never been to the diner,” she says.

  “Never? In four years? You’re not telling me you’ve lived in Jersey for four years and never been to your town diner?”

  “I haven’t. Is it good?”

  “ ‘Good’ isn’t quite the right word for it. But if you want to get away from the predictable, try ordering their seafood special and see what happens.”

  She laughs and nods. “Sure. Let’s do it.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We can talk about Eliot,” I say. “There are a few in that book that I haven’t even read.”

  “You’re funny, Cole. You make me laugh. You still have my number?”

  “I think so. Somewhere.” Etched into my soul. “I’ll text you.”

  She gives me a smile, a beautiful smile, the best I’ve gotten out of her, and then she turns and walks away. I turn the engine on and drive Dad’s Volvo out of the neighborhood, feeling happy.

  Here’s the pathetic truth: I’ve never really had a girlfriend before, and I’m not entirely sure how to get one. I don’t know how to make it happen. Matt’s had a few girlfriends, but it seems like he doesn’t really do anything, like they just show up for him. Probably because he’s an athlete, I suppose.

  It’s the kind of thing that makes me wish I had a big brother. Or my father back, of course.

  I’m halfway home when I realize I have a cooling bag of dog shit on the passenger seat beside me. I pull over and throw it deep into the woods.

  Four

  — Matt —

  It’s the morning of the second-to-last day of June, and I can’t sleep. There are thoughts bouncing around my brain every time I close my eyes. All kinds of stuff, like different parts of a movie that are out of order. Kids I haven’t thought about in years, the lake, the old school. Principal Schultz; the time in kindergarten when I got called down to his office. I don’t even remember what it was for. I remember that I was scared, though, and that he was pretty nice and let me off easy for whatever it was. I remember that he smelled like after-shave, like my grandfather used to smell, and I remember looking at a picture on his desk, of him and his kids at Disney World. He was grinning in it, his arm around Mickey Mouse’s shoulder, and I remember staring at it and thinking how weird it was for the principal to have a family and to go to Disney.

  I wonder what happened to the picture. I wonder what happened to all the stuff in the school when they tore it down.

  I finally get out of bed and go downstairs. The lawn guys are mowing outside, and someone’s cleaning the pool. There’s a cellophane-covered plate in the fridge with a note from Mom, the carb content laid out in her perfect handwriting. I warm it up, check my glucose level, and give myself some insulin. I eat the meal she prepared, then make myself some more toast and eat that, too, not bothering with an extra dose. I find some clothes in the laundry room, throw them on, and come back upstairs to find Dad in the middle of the living room. He’s waving a golf club with one hand and holding a cellphone to his ear with the other.

  “Sure,” he barks into the phone. “Sure! Just make sure it gets done by Friday.” He glances at me and winks. “Ken . . . Ken, you’re doing a great job. You just need to get this done.” He looks back at me and rolls his eyes, then swings one-handed at an imaginary ball on the carpet.

  I used to love to listen to Dad talk on the phone. He has a study on the second floor, and I’d wander in and sit in one of the chairs and listen to him go at it. He sounded so sure of himself and of everything else. He sounded like the boss.

  “All right, my friend. I’ll talk to you soon.” He puts the phone in his pocket and turns to me. “Finally awake!”

  “I didn’t know you were home,” I say.

  “Just heading out. Up for some golf?”

  “No.”

  “Elbow too tender?”

  “Yeah. Uh, yeah.”

  He frowns, leans the club against a section of the couch, and walks over to where I’m standing. “Let’s see you extend it.”

  “It’s fine, Dad. I’m doing the PT.”

  “I know. Just let me see.”

  “Christ, it’s fine. Look.” I flex and extend my right arm three times, feeling like a piece of meat. “I just don’t really feel like golf today. I’m going to see someone.”

  “Anyone I know?”

  “An old friend.” He shoots me a knowing look, and I turn away so that I don’t have to return it. Let him imagine that I’m going over to a girl’s house. Let him think that we’re some sort of buds. “I’ll see you later.”

  I go outside. As I get into my truck, I realize that I left the plate on the counter, something Mom absolutely hates, but I’m pretty sure this is one of the days when people come in to clean.

  It’s already hot when I pull up outside the Gerbers’ house. It’s nice, though not even close to being as nice as ours. You’d expect a broker like Mr. Ge
rber to have a much bigger place. It’s the same one they had when Andy and Paul were little and Cole and I would come over to play.

  Mrs. Gerber is surprised to see me, but she invites me right in and apologizes for the mess. “Frank,” she calls, “Matt Simpson is here!”

  “Matt?” a voice comes back from deeper inside, and right away I’m feeling weird about coming. When was the last time I was in this house? There must have been something, some sort of get-together, something for Paul? No. There were two Gerber boys the last time I was over, years and years ago.

  It’s very quiet, and they don’t seem to have AC, and I’m feeling like I shouldn’t be here. It’s like I’m showing up too soon after something bad happened, and I’m intruding. It’s awkward. Still, Mrs. Gerber seems genuinely happy to see me, just like she was happy at the store when I said I’d come by, and she’s already bringing me in and offering me something to drink. We enter the living room and find Mr. Gerber sitting in a recliner in his pajamas and bathrobe, newspaper spread on his lap, fumbling around with the lever to lower his feet. He manages to still look well-put-together.

  “Matt, my boy, what brings you here?”

  “Good morning, Mr. Gerber. I’m sorry to drop in on you.”

  “Not at all. Have a seat.”

  I sit on a hard green sofa. I’m facing the fireplace; I seem to remember the mantel being covered with photos when we were young, but there aren’t any there now, just a weird modern sculpture that’s not of anything in particular. Mr. Gerber is pouring himself some coffee and offers me some, and I take it because I can’t seem to wake all the way up.

  “How is work, Matt?”

  “Fine; it’s good. I like working at the store.”

  “Good practical business experience working there, though I don’t think it’s where you’re headed, is it? The grocery industry?”

  “Probably not, Mr. Gerber. I’m not sure where I’m headed yet.”

  “I’d definitely have you at the firm this summer; internship position, but I’m sure we could find some money to throw at you.”

  “Thank you, that’s . . . kind. But I’m happy at the store.” It’s close to being true. “Is Paul home? I was—​I’ve been thinking about him. Just wondering if, you know, he’d like to go out. I’d take him out. Like, get some ice cream and go for a drive, whatever he—​whatever he likes to do these days.”

  Both of their faces go soft. “Oh, that’s lovely, Matt,” Mrs. Gerber says, and she really seems to mean it.

  “He’d love that,” Mr. Gerber says. “He doesn’t get very many visitors. Do you want to go upstairs and see him, ask if he wants to come out?”

  Mrs. Gerber glances at him like she isn’t sure it’s such a good idea, but then she turns back to me and nods. “Go ahead, Matt. You remember. It’s just at the top of the stairs. I’ll grab him a clean T-shirt from the dryer.”

  I take my mug of coffee and go up the stairs, the back of my neck tingling. There are still pictures here, framed photos on the wall, family vacations with two kids and then with one. I stop by the last one with Andy in it, the summer before first grade, and I look closely. They’re at the Grand Canyon, the four of them at the top, their backs to it, smiling into a camera that must have been held by some friendly tourist. Oblivious. No idea what was coming in less than a year. I look into Andy’s squinting face. I told Cole that I had forgotten what Andy looked like, and that was basically true. I stopped being able to imagine him, to see him in my memories, but standing here and looking at this photo, I know that I never forgot at all. Every feature is familiar. It was always there, inside me; it just got lost for a while.

  I continue on to the top of the stairs. There is a hallway, closed doors on either side, and the open door to a bathroom ahead. I pause. I imagine what it must have been like here that day, while I was home in bed and Cole was being carried out of the school. Who called them? Was Mr. Gerber at work? Who told Paul about Andy? How did they make him understand? I wonder about that day, and about the day after, and then all the days after that. And then I go left when I know I should go right. I open the door and step inside.

  Andy’s room is just as I remember it. I don’t know what I expected to find; a sewing room, maybe, or just boxes of stuff, or some sort of bizarre shrine to the shooting, but I’m happy to discover that it’s just Andy’s room.

  Nothing’s changed from when me and Cole and Andy were crouched on the floor playing with Matchbox cars—​and there it is in the corner, at the foot of the bed, the official plastic car-carrying case that I’d been so jealous of and wanted so badly for myself. There is the Star Wars poster above the bed. There is the crappy painted ceramic dinosaur on the dresser from Cole’s fifth birthday party (mine broke a long time ago). I look around, and I can see it: the three of us, rushing in after playing outside. Maybe coming back from the lake, smelling of sunscreen. Hot and sweaty, pushing past one another for the best, fastest Matchbox car as though that were the most important thing in the world, which is exactly what it was.

  The air is so still in here. There’s a little bit of a funny smell, though I can’t quite place it. I can’t imagine that they ever open the window.

  “We haven’t changed a thing.” Mrs. Gerber is standing in the doorway behind me.

  “I’m sorry—​I, uh, it’s been a while; I forgot which one—”

  “That’s fine, Matt.” She steps inside the room and looks around. “Paul has a very hard time with change. ‘Wedded to sameness’ is what his psychologist calls it. Isn’t that sort of a poetic phrase? So we felt that we couldn’t just take the room away, change it to something else.”

  She trails off and looks around. Not able to change anything. “Wedded to sameness.” It makes me think of Cole’s house.

  “I made the bed that morning,” she says. “After he left for school.”

  I look at the bed. A Transformers sheet and matching quilt are neatly tucked up over a single pillow.

  “I wish I hadn’t.”

  We stand together in the silent room, looking at the empty bed, which seems smaller than it should be, and then Mrs. Gerber lays a hand on my shoulder and brings us out into the hall. She knocks on the door that I should have gone through at the start, after first carefully and firmly closing Andy’s door behind her.

  Paul’s room is a disaster. Unwashed clothes and dirty dishes, old toys like in Andy’s room but in much worse shape, and Paul sitting on the floor in the middle of it, cradling a laptop. He doesn’t look up as I step in behind his mother and stare at him.

  There’s something I’ve been wanting to ask Paul ever since I saw him at the grocery store, but I’m not sure how. I don’t even know if he really has actual conversations.

  “Paul,” Mrs. Gerber says, “guess who’s here?” Paul looks at her first, then at me. It’s like he’s looking through a telescope; he focuses on one thing and then on another, not able to take everything in all at once. “Matt came by to see you,” she continues. “It’s such a hot day, and he thought that you might go out for an ice cream.”

  Paul seems to register this without any expression, but he sets the computer down and gets to his feet. Ten minutes later he is getting into the passenger side of the Explorer, and I’m wondering if this is such a good idea after all, but it’s too late to back out now. The Gerbers are standing on the front porch, and they look too happy to disappoint. Still, it seemed like an ordeal for Paul’s mom to get him dressed and ready to go, and I wonder what will happen if Paul gets upset while we’re out, or if he decides to run away or something. He did a lot of that when we were starting high school, before they put him on all the meds. I start the car, and we head down the road and into town.

  There are a few places nearby where we could stop for ice cream: the diner; or Finn’s to buy a pint and a box of cones. Instead, I turn the radio on and roll down the windows and step on the gas, heading out toward the lake. I glance over at Paul, who is looking straight ahead, out the windshield, his hair blo
wing in the wind.

  “This okay, Paul? Not too much wind? I can turn on the AC instead.”

  Paul nods, though I’m not sure which part he is nodding to, being okay with the windows down or wanting the air conditioning on. He doesn’t seem unhappy and I want the windows open, so I don’t change anything and we continue on.

  When we were little kids, Cole and I always wanted the Gerber boys to be even more alike than they were. We wanted to play games where we had to figure out who was who, but it was always too easy, because no matter how alike they looked, even if they were dressed in the same clothes, it was no mystery. For one thing, Andy was just a little bit taller than Paul, plus it was clear as soon as one of them opened his mouth. Even before that, though, the look in their eyes gave it away. Andy was sharp; he didn’t miss anything, ever, while Paul looked at you like he was studying everything from a distance, the details of a situation slowly coming into focus.

  The lot at the beach is crowded. It’s mostly young kids; when we got older, we wanted to go to the pool instead, and then we wanted to go to the shore. I park in the shade and climb out, stretching my legs. We cross the lot to the beach, and I’m wondering what Paul would want to do. He’s not in swim trunks. How do you make a plan with someone who barely communicates? He keeps going, though, down to the water’s edge, where he sits in the wet sand, grabs a stray plastic shovel, and starts to dig. His shorts are going to get wet, and a couple of families playing nearby give him long looks, but I just watch as he digs a hole, packing the sand into a wall facing the lake. There’s a plastic bucket nearby, and I take it and set it down by the sand wall. Paul looks at it, then looks up, making eye contact with me for the first time.

  “Thank you,” he says. It sounds as though he’s reading from a script.

  “No problem. What are you building?”

  He doesn’t respond. He’s busy using the edge of the shovel to etch around the edges of the wall. I’m watching him as he continues to dig and pile and shape, with his hands and with the shovel, his focus completely on the work in front of him, and I’m startled by a voice from behind me. I turn to find a girl who had been in my senior math class. I can’t remember her name.